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AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

techcrunch.com

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Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#61

Post by Twirrim »

andrewstuart wrote: post #25
jawns wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're describing AWS Lambda / serverless architecture. But maybe I'm not understanding your use case?

There are a wide range of tiny operating systems that can boot in a matter of milliseconds. The applications are "whatever you want imagine" but yes one application is building FAAS Function As A Service in which the operating system carries out a single function. Put anther way, Docker is complex, overweight, and requires re-implementation of much computing infrastructure. You can meet many of the same goals as Dock…

From an ops perspective, spinning up an instance to process a single request seems like

1) a complete and utter nightmare to debug.

2) A huge waste of computing resources. Even with a unikernel you're wasting time initialising resources and getting in to a ready state to be able to process a request. Why bother when you can be ready and respond effectively instantly?

Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#62

Post by tylerjd »

0x0 wrote: post #51
jeffmcjunkin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be surprised if it'd be that much additional work, if the local SSD options are NVMe -- which is also PCI-e like GPU's.

Wait what, would they expose the raw SSD pci device to your vm? What's stopping you from scraping all the leftover data from the previous customer?

Probably something along the lines of secure erase. Most modern SSDs/NVMe drives are encrypted by default in firmware. All the firmware needs to do is throw away the old keys and generate new ones. It's better than zeroing the drive as there is no wear to the write cycles and guarantees that the slack space in the SSD is also cleared, which DD'ing to /dev/nvme0 wont be certain of. The nvme-format tool can be used for this: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/man1/nvme-format.1...

Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#64

Post by alexbilbie »

user5994461 wrote: post #50
mbesto wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would legitimately lose a lot of money if they did this now (and I would argue, wouldn't make up for it in market share). Most companies I work with who switch to AWS think it's a 1:1 conversion in terms of cost from a data center and pretty much just "leave AWS on" not realizing that they are not only paying for computing cost but the hidden cost of being able to scale up more instances quickly.

It's really really difficult to be able to turn on and off instances as needed, like turn a test instance on in the morning when developers come in and turn it off in the evening when they leave.

You can implement this with a simple auto-scaling group or write a small Lambda function which runs at a certain time to start/stop the instance

Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#65

Post by grzm »

ttobbaybbob wrote: post #55

Interesting that the techcrunch link has thrice as many upvotes as the amazon link

I suspect it's simply a function of which one happened to catch people's eye and where they started their discussion. Multiple submissions on the same topic (from the same or different sources) aren't that uncommon. Once one gets some momentum, it's likely to be reinforced: it'll appear higher on the front page, more people will notice it, more people will comment, more people will notice the comments on that article, which will make them notice that article, et cetera. I don't think you can read much more into it than that. I wouldn't be surprised if a mod comes along and merges the comments from one into the other, if they notice it.

What would be interesting is if they had exactly the same upvotes and comments.

Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#66

Post by vacri »

YokoZar wrote: post #42

I once considered writing an EC2 autoscaler that knew the exact timestamps of the instances so that it could avoid shutting down VMs that still had 59 minutes of "free" time left because they'd been up across another hour-long threshold. That sort of nonsense logic shouldn't be useful, but Amazon was giving a huge economic incentive for it. This is certainly a long time coming.

Remember that AWS has been in the game for over a decade. Per-hour billing was amazing when it came in.

Also, is the economic incentive really that huge? Or is it just a nicety?

Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#67

Post by mfringel »

grzm wrote: post #35
nodesocket wrote: post #34

Per second billing is somewhat of a gimmick just so Amazon can say they are more granular than Google Compute. The difference between seconds and a minute of billing is fractions of a cent. Rounding errors. The exception is Google Compute has a 10 minute minimum, so if you are creating machines and destroying them quickly, per second billing will be noticeable.

I think the useful comparison people are making is the difference between the previous per-hour billing and new per-second billing. Sure, if they can get some mileage comparing per-second to per-minute, great. At the end of the day isn't the increased granularity better?

I think "second vs. minute" might be into "distinction without a difference" territory. Sure, per-second will definitionally help at the margins, but I'm dubious about the amount of money it will actually save.

That all being said, it can enable a bunch of interesting things (e.g. more interesting stuff with AWS Lambda), and I look forward to see what per-second billing becomes an enabling technology for.

Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#68

Post by chillydawg »

whoisjohnkid wrote: post #59
prohor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - just check cloud comparison, AWS is rarely at the top: https://www.cloudorado.com/cloud_server_comparison.jsp

Wow thanks for sharing this link. Didn't know about this. One thing I noticed though is the pricing seems a bit biased; for example for AWS it recommends an m1.small with 1GB Ram and 20GB of Storage at $35 a month ... However if you used a t2.micro that would give you the same specs for $10.79

Not quite the same, you don't own the whole core on the t2 and will get cpu throttled.

Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#69

Post by segmondy »

gumby wrote: post #58

Back to the future: this was how computing worked back in the punch card days. Minicomputers and personal computers were supposed to liberate you from this tyranny: computing so cheap that you could have a whole computer to your self for a while!

We still have whole computers to ourselves. Those that wish to throw their money away renting can knock themselves out.

Re: AWS announces per-second billing for EC2 instances

#70

Post by termie »

mbesto wrote: post #56
user5994461 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really really difficult to be able to turn on and off instances as needed, like turn a test instance on in the morning when developers come in and turn it off in the evening when they leave.

Which is why reserved instances exist.

The reserved instance pricing model is really poorly implemented. You have to commit to an instance class and a region, and if you need to change you can, but there is some secondary market. When compared to a sustained use model, it is a disaster. Managing all that in a large org is a real pain in the ass.
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